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Somehow, I wasn’t surprised. I haven’t thought of Chris Cornell or Soundgarden or Audioslave in years, but the information didn’t really shock me. The news was just breaking, and my brother suggested it could have been an overdose. I was thinking it was suicide.

I have a cassette copy of his solo album Euphoria Morning, from when I either just graduated high school or just started college. Back in those days money was really scarce, and even if there was Limewire I didn’t have the funds to buy a cheap MP3 player. So it is one of the few records that I bought during my lean years, and it was one of the albums I often listened to on our old karaoke/cassette player.

I was struck with how melancholy his songs were. The cheeky lines: “I only love you when I’m down… I’m down all the time.” The lonely hopefulness of “Preaching the End of the World”. I listened to it again just now (on YouTube), and as with feelings long hidden and forgotten, it suddenly came to the surface. When I first listened to that song, it was years before a major depressive episode, but somehow the words were prescient, like a person I was bound to meet later on. Okay, maybe I was just an angsty teenager like most teenagers were then, but the words evoked a familiarity akin to a stranger that you somehow felt like a friend.